What an interesting example of synergy. I recently posted a video on YouTube that outlined the results of an experiment that I performed that showed the same results--the presence of water in a climate system produces an overwhelming negative feedback against diurnal changes in temperature and overall those climate systems that are more humid are on average cooler than arid climates.

Beyond that, and something that I didn't get into in the video, is the fact that the phenomenon of "moist convection" that drives the strong upward convection currents that creates thunderstorms operates in direct opposition to the idea that warm moist air somehow resists the forces of nature that compel it to ascend and cool while it dwells near the surface of the earth driving a heating feedback loop.

“An essential element of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis is the positive “water vapor feedback” hypothesis. That is, if something causes an increase in the temperature this will cause an increase in the evaporation of water into water vapor. This new humidity will absorb more of the infrared radiation coming off of the ground. This increased absorption of infrared radiation is believed to warm the air even further. This makes the air able to hold even more water vapor and this result in even more evaporation, which increases the humidity even further and the cycle starts over. This is called a “positive” feedback, since water vapor is believed to amplify atmospheric warming. Being curious about the truth of this hypothesis I designed a simple experiment to study the effect of rising and falling levels of humidity on soil and air temperature and discovered that 1) the addition of water to a climate system exerts a significant negative feedback against temperature changes night and day, 2) water vapor has the same graphical relationship to temperature that insulin has to blood sugar and insulin is known to exert a strong negative feedback against blood sugar levels and 3) over the course of time the addition of water to a climate system causes a perceptible drop in the yearly mean temperature.”

It only makes sense. If water vapor in the air caused more heating which evaporated more water, the cycle would continue until all the water on earth was evaporated; and this would have happened eons ago-we wouldn't even be here today.

Read more about things that affect YOU, in Kids Before Trees. Get it at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/80505

Key point to me is "... These observations might seem counter intuitive since we often perceive humidclimates to be warmer than arid climates, but as we have seen that is just a sensory illusion. Since our bodies are water cooled through perspiration, which is more efficient in low humidity environments, people who move from Dallas to Phoenix or from Knoxville to Las Vegas think that they are moving to a cooler climate; but they are not. It just feels cooler."[Not sure "illusion" is the right term.] Here at 19°S,146°E, 6am, 26°C 75%RH. Comfortable. If it goes to 28°C and 85%RH it becomes uncomfortable. Conversely, 32°C <=30%RH would be comfortable. Very difficult to explain to "experts" who only experience temperate climates. Also, just as well those pushing water-vapour positive feedback are wrong. If they weren't, no one would be able to live here ... http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW4128.latest.shtml

"More humidity also usually means that there is more water in the soil, which has at least two affects on the temperature: 1) More water is available to cool the soil through latent heat transfer, i.e., evaporation and 2) increased water in the soil increases the specific heat of the soil, which will by itself dampen the swing in diurnal temperatures seen in dry climates."

And shortly after that.

"It is beyond the scope of this paper to sort out the contribution of each separate force to the net affect on temperature."

The effect you are picking up is this: With wet soil most of the incident solar radiation is used in evaporation of the available water, i.e. it is transformed into latent heat, and sensible heat is 'pegged down'. As the soil's moisture diminishes the bulk of the incident solar radiation is transformed into sensible heat, so the temperature starts to rise.

Sensible heat is heat that can be sensed, latent heat is the heat implicit in evaporating water.

The most important region in the atmospheric column for the greenhouse effect is the mid to upper troposphere, well above the surface, which you are considering. Your method does not address this region, so it says nothing about the greenhouse effect per se, it merely reflects the process in the above paragraph.

Observations and models both support the idea that increases in specific humidity are similar to that produced by holding relative humidity constant. This makes sense due to the Clausius Clapeyron relationship. Given that this is the case, as the planet warms so specific humidity goes up, which implies an increase in the absolute amount of water vapour. This increase in water vapour in turn implies more absorption and emission of infra red radiation, hence a positive water vapour feedback.

As the planet has warmed due to human activites post 1975 so the water vapour levels have gone up.http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009-time-series/humidityYou'll notice that there even seems to be a hiatus in increasing water vapour post 2000, this is coincident with the hiatus in global warming due to the ENSO, vulcanism and solar activity.

"It is absurd to claim only the mid to upper troposphere water vapor is important."

No. It is technically and factually correct. The key issue is the effective emission layer of the atmosphere, the layer that is at the effective emission temperature of the Earth. That is in the mid to upper troposphere.

It is also factually incorrect to state that atmospheric WV has decreased. I provided a link in my earlier reply that displays the results of three published (i.e. published as peer reviewed research) datasets of atmospheric humidity. Atmospheric humidity data from the 1940s is too sparse to say anything of confidence with regards atmospheric humidity.

I shall not be reading other pages from this blog as I prefer to get my knowledge from primary peer reviewed research. I used to be a sceptic and now read the science as a hobby.

"I shall not be reading other pages from this blog as I prefer to get my knowledge from primary peer reviewed research. I used to be a sceptic and now read the science as a hobby."

That's surely the best way to keep your belief system intact, as the journals are well controlled by the warmists. I would recommend you read the climategate e-mails about that, but then, that would endanger your belief system, so better not.

Baloney - water vapor is present throughout the entire atmosphere and absorbs & emits IR no matter where located. Furthermore, the link you provided is 3 datasets of SURFACE humidity, which you just claimed is not important.

If you had bothered to review my posts I linked to above you would have found that 2 of the 3 are from peer reviewed research.

"The most important region in the atmospheric column for the greenhouse effect is the mid to upper troposphere, well above the surface, which you are considering."

Firstly, there is no "important regions in the atmospheric column for the greenhouse effect" because the greenhouse effect is simply an unproven hypothesis based on multiple logical fallacies and circular arguments. Yours being no exception in this respect.

Secondly, above the effective emission height which is located at an altitude where the atmospheric temperature is at the effective emission temperature of 255K/ -18º C, the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km breaks down. One of the main reasons for that is that the effective emission height is usually found just above the cloud tops. The lapse rate above this altitude and on up to the tropopause, shifts towards the dry adiabatic lapse rate of 10º C per km, indicating, as one would expect, that at and above the altitude at which clouds form, the atmosphere becomes considerably dryer.

So to recap here, when moist warm air rises to near the effective emission altitude, the water vapour begins to emit IR, clouds form and the air dries out. We know this because above the cloud tops the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km breaks down and shifts towards the dry adiabatic temperature lapse rate of 10º C per km.

The troposphere is about 10 km deep. The effective emission height is on average about 5 km.

Therefore the mid to upper troposphere is where any so called "greenhouse effect", if indeed there were such a phenomenon, is going to be considerably diminished.

I take my science neat without the confusing interpretation of others. Given what I've seen in this blog I have no interest in your interpretation of the science.

"Baloney - water vapor is present throughout the entire atmosphere and absorbs & emits IR no matter where located. "

Baloney? That's rather rude. Yes WV emits IR, but at lower levels the spectrum is saturated, so it is at the drier higher levels that the greatest effect occurs, and like a dam holding back water, this then has a knock on effect through to the surface.

Clausius Clapeyron tells us that the water holding capacity of the atmosphere goes up 7% per degC warming. Regression of SSM/I total column water vapour with sea surface temperature (SST) yields a regression of 7.8%/degC SST. Ref: http://www.lmd.ens.fr/wavacs/Lectures/Randel-3.pdf Water vapour in the atmosphere is going up with warming, not down.

We seem to have moved on from my original points with regards the main post, so I take it that you accept that the observations actually show the impact of drying on the destination of energy from insolation, and say nothing about the greenhouse effect.

W R Pratt,

So well over a century of carefully considered physics, physics without which artefacts such as the SSM/I and AIRS satellite systems wouldn't work, is all wrong and you are right. Have you published your revelations in a peer reviewed journal?

The downdraft of the Hadley Cells is dry air, it falls in regions to the north and south of the equator forming hot deserts. Why is the diurnal temperature range so large in these regions? Compare and contrast this with a clear sky summer high pressure system over the UK (where I live), why is the diurnal range not as large under those conditions?

I also have no interest in your interpretation of the science, therefore I will not be wasting any additional time refuting nor publishing your replies.

I have already shown you satellite data showing total atmospheric WV has decreased with warming, which you choose to ignore. I have also shown radiosonde data showing tropospheric WV has declined with warming, which you also choose to ignore. Furthermore, you continue to ignore the 2nd law of thermodynamics which clearly states a colder body (the atmosphere) CANNOT warm a hotter body (the surface) without work input. The atmosphere CANNOT provide work input to make a hot body hotter.

"The most important region in the atmospheric column for the greenhouse effect is the mid to upper troposphere, well above the surface, which you are considering. Your method does not address this region, so it says nothing about the greenhouse effect per se"

One version of the “greenhouse effect/water vapor feedback” hypothesis that involves the mid to upper levels of the troposphere and water vapor feedback recognizes that humidity causes a slower lapse rate, which raises the altitude at which the air temperature drops to -18C—the affective radiating temperature of the atmosphere. Some people call this altitude the “top of the atmosphere” (TOA).

This version of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis then applies the standard lapse rate of 6.8C/km to both the older lower altitude and the newer higher altitude to calculate the projected ground level temperature at the bottom of these two respective atmospheric columns.

To better visualize this version of the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis lets use some actual weather balloon soundings from above Las Vegas (specific humidity = 1.04 g/kg) on a particular day and compare it to weather balloon soundings over Little Rock (specific humidity of 13.83 g/kg) that particular day. These soundings are from http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html and they were both recorded at 11:00 AM, June 1, 2011.

As expected, because of Little Rock’s extra humidity the TOA over Little Rock (6961m) was higher than the TOA over Las Vegas (6806). When I applied the standard lapse rate of 6.8 °C/km to the TOA altitudes in both locations to calculate the “expected” temperature at 750m (the altitude in Las Vegas) I came up with the following numbers:

Las Vegas = 23.3 °C @ 757mLittle Rock = 23.9 °C @ 743m

Had I stopped right here I could have asserted that the extra humidity in Little Rock is estimated to create a +0.6°C positive feedback. But I didn’t stop there. I looked at the actual temperatures at around 750m (the altitude of Las Vegas) and this is what I saw:

Las Vegas = 30.4 °C @ 757mLittle Rock = 24.4 °C @ 743m

As you can see, the extra humidity in the atmospheric column over Little Rock actually created a -6 °C negative feedback! So, even though the TOA above Little Rock was higher in altitude the ground level temperature was lower by 6 °C.

Can anyone guess why the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis predicted a positive water vapor feedback when in reality the humidity in Little Rock created a strong negative feedback?

That’s right! When I applied the standard lapse rate of 6.8 °C/1,000m to the TOA of the dry column of air over Las Vegas it greatly underestimated the ground temperature under that dry atmospheric column. This made the estimated temperature under the moist atmospheric column in Little Rock appear higher than the ground level temperature under the arid atmospheric column in Las Vegas, which is a complete reverse of realtiy.

Again, these figures . . .

Las Vegas = 30.4 °C @ 757mLittle Rock = 24.4 °C @ 743m

. . . are actual temperatures taken on the same day that shows the actual affect of the extra humidity in Little Rock on ground level temperatures, which was a -6 °C negative feedback. This echoes the observations made in the video. If you are curious the actual lapse rate to the TOA over Little Rock was 6.9 °C/km while the actual lapse rate to the TOA over Las Vegas was 8 °C/km.

One final thought, the "greenhouse effect" hypothesis is based upon Joseph Fourier's calculations that asserts that the surface of the earth is too warm by about 33°C and that water vapor itself (depending upon the author) creates about 20°C of warming. Regardless of how sophisticated the hypothesis, how massive the computer models, how voluminous the peer-reviewed literature, if water vapor can (and has) been demonstrated to be associated with ground level cooling instead of warming then something is askew with that hypothesis.

I had a link to the first paper but it no ;longer works. Roderick is at ANU (Australian National University) and i think the AGW believers did not like his research.This is from a page of Graham Farquhars web page at ANU.Physics of pan evaporation

Observations from around the world have shown that on average, pan evaporation, a measure of the evaporatiove demand of the atmopshere has declined over the last 50 years.

We want to know why and from that, deduce the implications for plant water use and for water availability.

As part of that research we constrcuted the fully instrumented pan at Canberra airport. With that pan we are examining the hour-by-hour energy balance of this unique, fully-instrumented evaporation pan.

-Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, followed by carbon dioxide and other trace gases. Without a natural greenhouse effect, the temperature of the Earth would be about zero degrees F (-18°C) instead of its present 57°F (14°C).

-The global concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere today far exceeds the natural range over the last 650,000 years of 180 to 300 ppmv.

-Global surface temperatures have increased about 0.74°C (plus or minus 0.18°C) since the late-19th century, and the linear trend for the past 50 years of 0.13°C (plus or minus 0.03°C) per decade is nearly twice that for the past 100 years.

“Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas, followed by carbon dioxide and other trace gases. Without a natural greenhouse effect, the temperature of the Earth would be about zero degrees F (-18°C) instead of its present 57°F (14°C).”

This is a scientific hypothesis based upon a mathematical construct first introduced by Joseph Fourier in the early 19th century. Had Joseph Fourier used the temperature of the atmosphere’s center mass, which on average is about 5k up he would not have concluded that the earth was “too warm” and the “greenhouse effect” hypothesis would never have been born. Unfortunately for Joseph Fourier the first weather balloon was not launched until long after he was dead and he had no way of knowing even where the center mass of the atmosphere was much less what its temperature was.

In the world of science there is nothing wrong with advancing a scientific hypothesis that turns out to be wrong, but once disproven it should be discarded.

The experiment in the video at the top of this thread tested the hypothesis that asserts that the presence of water vapor helps create a “greenhouse effect” that raises the surface level temperatures 32-33 °C. Conservative estimates say that water vapor alone is responsible for at least 20 °C of that warming. Contrary to this assertion, each of the “arid vs. humid” city comparisons demonstrates that increasing the amount of “greenhouse gas” (water vapor) in the air results in a decrease in temperature.

It is not just that the presence of water vapor doesn’t warm the atmosphere as much as predicted; its presence is associated with a decrease in temperature! Instead of creating a "greenhouse effect" the presence of water in a climate system creates a "swamp cooler effect" since an evaporative cooler is a much more appropriate analogy for what the atmosphere does to surface temperatures than is a greenhouse. In reality, the greenhouse is a human invention that actually protects a pocket of still air against the "swamp cooler effect" exerted by the atmosphere.

Let me interject that this and other data about water vapor represent a significant crisis for most AGW skeptics, even a fatal blow. Alarmists are at least consistent: Since water vapor is regarded as the most powerful greenhouse component, they’re logically compelled to believe that it constitutes a ‘positive feedback’ to ‘radiative forcing.’ But many skeptics who counter this, claiming that water vapor has a cooling effect, a ‘negative feedback,’ seem not to understand that this overtly contradicts their (recited-by-rote) contention that water vapor is the planet’s principal heating gas. Water vapor’s specific heat capacity alone, however, is a clue that it sucks in ambient heat, thereby making it harder to raise the temperature of a humid environment. Thus greenhouse operators find that their nighttime heating costs are reduced when they remove water vapor from the air. Add to this that the generation of water vapor is synonymous with evaporative surface cooling, and you’ve got a lousy case for water vapor as a global warming gas.

when all other variables are equal, a substance with higher specific heat capacity can absorb or release more energy than a substance with lower specific heat.

Water vapour has almost twice the specific heat capacity of air and so could (wrongly) be considered a "greenhouse gas". The fact the it naturally evaporates and condenses at ambient temperatures, counteracts any warming potential it may have. Thus water vapour acts as a coolant in the atmosphere.

CO2 has a specific heat capacity which is 15% lower than air and is non-condesning at ambient temperatures. CO2 therefore, also acts as a coolant in the Earths atmosphere.

Understanding and demonstrating latent heat is the key.I will be developing the below thread in the near future, but in the mean time please feel free to try out the oily mug, or oily tray experiemnts for yourselves.http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/thread-1466.html

Understanding heat pipes, and that the water cycle is a heat pipe helps as well.

According to Paltridge et al. (2009), "water vapor feedback in climate models is large and positive," and "the various model representations and parameterizations of convection, turbulent transfer, and deposition of latent heat generally maintain a more-or-less constant relative humidity (i.e., an increasing specific humidity q) at all levels in the troposphere as the planet warms," and they say that this "increasing q amplifies the response of surface temperature to increasing CO2 by a factor or 2 or more." Consequently, knowledge of how q responds to atmospheric warming is of paramount importance to the task of correctly predicting how air temperatures respond to increasing CO2 concentrations. Against this backdrop, Paltridge et al. explored this important subject further by determining trends in relative and specific humidity at various levels in the atmosphere based on reanalysis data of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) for the period 1973-2007.The three researchers report that "the face-value 35-year trend in zonal-average annual-average specific humidity q is significantly negative at all altitudes above 850 hPa (roughly the top of the convective boundary layer) in the tropics and southern midlatitudes and at altitudes above 600 hPa in the northern midlatitudes." As a result, Paltridge et al. conclude that "negative trends in q as found in the NCEP data would imply that long-term water vapor feedback is negative - that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2." The ultimate outcome of this dilemma must therefore await a thorough study of the reliability of the pertinent NCEP data, in order to establish, in the words of the three scientists, "what (if any) aspects of the observed [humidity] trends survive detailed examination of the impact of past changes of radiosonde instrumentation and protocol within the various international networks" that collected the globe-spanning data that comprise the NCEP reanalysis archive.

Authors Chu et al. (2010) examined five climate change indices related to extreme precipitation events in the Hawaiian Islands based on daily observational records over a period 1950-2007. The five indices were (1) simple daily intensity index, (2) total number of days with precipitation exceeding 25.4 mm( 1 inch), (3) annual maximum consecutive five-day precipitation amount, (4) the fraction of annual total precipitation from events exceeding a threshold value and, (5) the consecutive number of dry days. These five indices were examined in detail for two time periods (1950-79 and 1980-2007) in an effort to determine how recent warming may have changed the precipitation characteristics over the Hawaiian Islands.Results indicated, according to the authors, that "there has been a change in the type of precipitation intensity since 1980, resulting in more frequent light precipitation and less frequent moderate and heavy precipitation intensity." The study further showed that the Hawaiian Islands in recent years have experienced shorter annual number of days with intense precipitation, smaller consecutive five-day precipitation amounts and a lengthening of annual maximum number of consecutive dry days. The study also found that ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation) dominates Hawaiian Islands precipitation patterns, with the La Niña (cold) phase providing more extreme precipitation events.

It is of interest to compare the findings of this study with model projections that suggest a warmer climate provides more moisture in the atmosphere and will result in more frequent and intense precipitation events. Yet, as the results of this study show, the availability of more moisture in the atmosphere does not necessarily produce more extreme (heavy) rainfall, which suggests that the models still have a long way to go before they get it right.

Rud Istvan says:September 13, 2013 at 4:46 pmThrowing good money after bad is never wise.All GCMs fail because the grid scale resolution you post (same image used in my book) is far too coarse to resolve things like tropical thunderstorm convection cells (which is why GCMs cannot resolve Lindzens adaptive iris, and therefore why CMIP5 still gets the water vapor feedback wrong, therefore why they still predict an equatorial troposphere hot spot when there isn’t one), or clouds.This is inherent in the most powerful supercomputers, which are a couple of orders of magnitude not powerful enough to be able to adequately model these necessary phenomena on suitable small gridscales. Leaked AR5 WG1 SOD Chapter 7 (clouds) even said they may never be powerful enought to do so, before concluding that cloud feedback was significantly positive based on (and this is a direct quote) “unknown contributions by processes yet to be accounted for.”IPCC cargo cult science.So this formal appeal for GCM consolidation has very little real appeal. First rule of holes if you are in one and want out: stop digging.

This is so obvious. Half the incoming solar energy at TOA is in the IR. WV absorbs this, and blocks 156 watts/m2 from reaching the surface during maximum insolation.

WV then traps outgoing heat causing warming at night.

WV, and in fact all GH gasses, moderate temperatures. The moon can reach +110 C in the day. A dry desert can reach +55C.

The tropics on earth get no where near as hot as that.

I have ben saying this for ages, that GH gas warming is just an increase in average, not an increase in Tmax, therefore plants and animals are not exposed to NEW temperatures, just to less extreme ones.

Colleagues here in Australia are working on a correlation between rainfall at a site and its maximum daily temperature. At sites so far examined in detail, the conclusion seems to be that “water cools”.The correlation is not shown yet to be causation, but it is strong and large.It is plausible that temperatures might need adjustment for rainfall before they are to be used for certain purposes. If it is not already catered for, one example of a need for rainfall-corrected data sets would be estimation of climate sensitivity. Another would be the calibration of tree ring proxies, which might be better done after removal of a known growth agent, namely rainfall, from the temperature data used for calibration.

Water as vapor and droplets raises the enthalpy of the air so a volume of air with increased enthalpy can carry more heat before rising in temperature. So the amount of heat in the atmosphere may remain constant as temperature varies with the amount of water. Temperature is the incorrect metric for measuring heat retention due to radiative gases.